Movie notes: Summer scorecard

With record box-office receipts and a Tomatometer score of 98, “Toy Story 3″ shows the franchise hasn’t lost any of its appeal.

We’re just past the halfway mark of the summer-movie season — remember, Hollywood defines “summer” as “the first weekend in May through mid-August” — and one thing has become abundantly clear.

Does this summer suck, or what?

Whether it’s a long-lasting hangover from the writers’ strike or just a bad case of only giving the public a familiar brand, this has to be the worst crop of summer flicks in years. And it’s not as if the bar was set all that high. Last year was nothing special, but it was still dotted with better than-average mainstream fare like “Star Trek,” “Up,” “The Hangover,” “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince,” “Bruno,” “Julie and Julia,” “The Proposal” and “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” plus some sleepers in “District 9,” “The Hurt Locker,” “500 Days of Summer” and “Inglourious Basterds.”

So far this summer, we have one critical hit (“Toy Story 3″), one or two surprises, and a whopping five flicks with Tomatometer ratings in the teens or lower. This includes “Grown Ups,” which opens today with the distinction of being the worst-rated mainstream summer flick to date, having scored an 8. That’s even worse than “Marmaduke” (10).

Anyway, here are a few midseason awards, in no particular order:

• Disappearing act: “MacGruber”: Even the lowest-profile summer flicks usually stick around awhile. But this movie-length version of the “Saturday Night Live” sketch opened May 21 (opposite “Shrek 4″) without being screened for critics, went to the dollar theater three weeks later and this weekend vanished completely.

• Surprise hit: “The Karate Kid”: Further proof that you can’t underestimate the box-office potential of youth-oriented films, especially with a familiar brand. The reboot of the ’80s franchise cracked the $100 million mark in two weeks. Plus, it was a modest critical hit, with a Tomatometer score of 69.

• Bomb squad (critics): Summer movies usually aren’t critics’ darlings, but it’s rare to see this many movies they hated with a blinding hot passion. Besides “Grown Ups,” these films had Tomatometer scores under 20 — “Marmaduke” (10), “Killers” (13), “Jonah Hex” (13) and “Sex and the City 2″ (16).

• Bomb squad (box office): The take for two Memorial Day weekend offerings, “Prince of Persia” and “Sex 2,” looks pretty good — $80 million and $90 million, respectively — until you realize they cost $100 million and $200 million to make. The same goes for “Robin Hood,” which cracked the $100 million mark last weekend. $100 million used to be the dividing line for a major hit, but not when “Robin Hood,” like “Persia,” also cost $200 million to make.

• King of the world: the “Toy Story” franchise: Other studios could learn a lesson from Pixar about not wearing out your welcome. After the success of “Toy Story” in (1995), any other studio might have taken the “Shrek” philosophy and cranked out a sequel every three years. By not doing so, Pixar increased demand and virtually ensured that “Toy Story 3″ would be the dominant movie of a sequel/remake-filled summer.

• Little big films: “The Secret in Their Eyes,” “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”: Need proof that people will go see something not backed by a $50 million PR campaign? These two foreign flicks have enjoyed lengthy art-house runs in S.A. despite subtitles and no TV commercials. Apparently word of mouth still counts for something.